World of Warcraft: meh?

The Game Room
1

I’ve been playing City of Heroes for years. Recently someone invited me to try the WoW 10-day trial, and I’ve been playing it for two days (level 12 Human Paladin). For some reason the game just doesn’t grab me. Anybody else have this reaction?

The graphics are thick and cartoony, the chicks aren’t hot, the animation of other characters is jumpy, and there’s no way to tell where you’re going. Where do I turn this quest in again? Who knows. Where’s the mine I’m supposed to clear out? Beats the hell out of me. Oh, you can download a third-party program for that? Why wasn’t it in the game in the first place?

Ah, nice. My one and only character on Frostmane can’t be accessed because I’m number 359 in an hour-long queue to log in.

Crafting? Excuse me while I click the button so I can craft this worthless crap into slightly less worthless crap, which I will then craft into something I could actually use, not that I would, because it’s still crap. I killed a spider that had better armor than I can make.

Mining? Look, there’s a shiny thing I can click on. There’s some copper. But I can’t carry it, since my inventory is full. I need to make some money so I can afford more inventory, but I can’t make much money because I can’t carry any copper to make useless crap out of. Plus, it’s a trial account, so I can’t trade, and friends can’t give me any money to buy bags.

People play this game?

Now, to be fair, there are some very good points about the game. Blizzard has more experience than did Cryptic in game design and balance, so I’m relatively confident they know how to keep over-powered classes in check. It’s got a robust crafting system, if you like such things (I don’t). It’s got plenty of equipment to shop and compare, if you like such things (I don’t). It’s in the Warcraft setting, which is great for the people already familiar with Blizzard’s other such games (I’m not). About the best thing I can say for it: it’s a seamless no-loading-zone world.

I’m just not gripped by it. There are better-looking sword-and-sorcery games out there (Oblivion is beautiful). There are games out there with better NPC interaction — you still can’t beat Baldur’s Gate II, though NWN2 is pretty decent. There are better sandbox fantasy games, like Morrowind.

Is it wrong to play WoW and say “meh”? Fans, what am I missing about this game that makes it so popular?

2

I think it’s totally meh.

3

Aside from the graphics complaints, which are subjective (I really like the graphics in WoW) it sounds like these gripes would apply to just about any other MMO out there.

Although this:

…is kind of unfair. You’re comparing completly different types of games. Might as well point out that Gran Tourismo has better driving physics than WoW, while you’re at it.

4

I don’t think so. It’s definitely a fair criticism. Maybe what you meant to say is that this is par for the course in terms of MMO’s? If so then for the most part I agree.

They can’t really upgrade the engine too much without possibly introducing bugs and/or forcing their customers to upgrade their PC hardware. so MMO’s will always try and pander to the lowest common denominator in terms of hardware and then of course they go on to live long lives (if successful), so after some time the engine will only get marginally better and will tend to show its age.

The problem still remains: the low quality graphics fail to impress me. I fell like I’m playing NWN 1. AND the cartoony art direction completely turns me off. I prefer a more realistic/gritty art direction in my fantasy games.

So a big fat meh, from me too.

5

There you go. Your tastes don’t run that way. City of Heroes is totally your bag, and that’s cool.

Personally I like the cartoony visuals. Too many other games go for the realism, and in doing so get dangerously close to the uncanny valley. WoW’s cartoony visuals work (although I agree a lot of the characters are ooogly), and they do a wonderful job of representing the not-too-serious tone the entire game has. It does a good job of straddling the line between serious and goofy.

I like City of Heroes too. But they are different games. It’s certainly more than possible for one game to appeal more to your mindset than the other.

6

Miller beat me to it, pretty much. And if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. shrug People do play the game just fine without addons, however. You read the quest text carefully, explore, and find the stuff instead of turning everything into a “head directly to point X,Y; kill an average of 7.52 MOBs and the item will appear; return to base” sequence that the addons turn it into.

My husband and I had to stop playing City of Heroes/City of Villains a few years back because a graphics update turned the game into a slideshow for us. We started playing WoW and have been subscribers ever since. There are plenty of MMORPGs out there that don’t have as cartoony of graphics but higher system requirements; try EverQuest 2 or LotRO if it bothers you.

7

I tried the 10 day trial around Christmas and got a bit hooked. I played for 2-3 hours at a time, snuck in some gaming on Christmas eve. That’s pretty “hooked” for me. I talked to the couple people I knew who played it and told them what I really liked - jumping off things, swimming under water, exploring. They laughed and said those aren’t even the fun parts, and that I’d get to them later.

So I got to about level 23 and still haven’t gotten to the fun parts apparently because I got dreadfully bored with it. The quests are all the same and ceased being remotely entertaining. I never even tried crafting. Apparently when I paid for the full version Blizzard accepted my credit card for the upgrade but not for the monthly billing. I got a note saying I didnt have a cc on file and my account would lapse. I dont plan to do anything about it. Meh.

8

What makes WoW interesting are things you’re not mentioning because, when I started playing, I had many of the same gripes (though I never had a problem with the graphics, but now I enjoy it. Like any MMO, it has a lot of things in there intended to waste time, but the main thing that addicts me (and most others) are the parts that WoW gets well that many other MMOs don’t, and that’s cooperative playing, endless perfectionism, and lots of theorycrafting.

For me, I generally don’t enjoy the grind of leveling, getting rep, skilling professions etc. I do them because they let me get to the things I do enjoy, which is playing in a cooperative setting in raids, where we can enact complicated strategies, solve problems together, and ultimately be challenged.

I also enjoy the aspect of getting more gear. One of my favorite aspects from traditional RPGs was collecting new and more powerful weapons and armors, but what makes WoW more interesting, is that it’s not something that can ever truly be perfected, and if you can, well there’s a patch around the corner that has more powerful gear and more challenging encounters. In an RPG, I could beat it, get a character up to maximum level, get his best weapon and armor, but as soon as I got that last piece, there simply wasn’t a reason to pick it up again and enjoy the fruits of that labor.

Finally, theorycrafting is one of my favorite parts. I love crunching numbers and designing specs, determining what spells to cast in what circumstances, and which pieces of gear are best in what combinations for what circumstances. Some people are happy to let others crunch the numbers and give them the answer, but that’s half the fun for me.
And yes, when I started playing, I was confused, but I’d never played an MMO before and was generally a console gamer, so I was making a pretty large adjustment. The problem is, it is a pretty complicated game, and a lot of the early part, which unfortunately you won’t get too far past in the 10-day trial, is devoted more to teaching you about how to play and giving you a lot of lore background, than actually getting into challenging content. Fortunately, I had friends who had been playing since launch, and helped get me through the rough spots, and most of the reason I played at first was because I enjoyed playing with them, and I didn’t really develop an interest directly in the game itself until I got to 60 (which was then the maximum level) and started raiding.

So yeah, IME, it’s not surprising at all that you’d be in the trial period and not be impressed. However, if you’re not into the cooperative play, PVP, theorycrafting, or the endless pursuit of perfection, you may never find yourself that interested in the game.

9

In order to truly appreciate and understand WoW you should read this and this. It will give you a deeper understanding. Nearly zen like…

-XT

10

LOTRO has a 10 day trial right now too, :slight_smile:

11

I think it’s perfectly fair. I have Baldur’s Gate II, NWN2, Oblivion, and Morrowind already. I can play them for free. Sword and sorcery games aren’t exactly rare by any stretch of the imagination. If I’m going to be expected to play $15.00 per month (or whatever) on yet another Ubiquitious Epic Fantasy bashquest, it isn’t too much to expect that game to be worth the monthly expense. I just don’t see it.

I agree that there’s a danger of spoon-feeding players quest information: go here, click X, come back, get Y; take next mission. City of Heroes does do this to a certain extent.

I’m not sure that the WoW model is an improvement: here’s your quest, go find it, pray like hell you remember where the quest-giver is. You don’t get a reward unless you’re a meticulous record-keeper and diligent explorer? That activity doesn’t appeal: it says “time sink” to me. It says “we don’t want you to outlevel the game too quickly so we’ll deliberately slow you down. We’ll leave out vital quest information because it amuses us to watch you run around in a panic looking for that brat who wants his pork pie.”

12

I like LotRO a good deal more than WoW, because the world feels less gamey. Of course, having said that, I’m still playing Everquest, which is more gamey than either, because that’s where my friends are. MMOs. Such a nuisance.

13

I just don’t care that much about gear. I’m not passionate about stats. To a large degree, numbers in games don’t interest me. I don’t care about having the best stats or the highest … whatever. There’s a whole pile of equipment in WoW (or in any game) that I accept that I will never see, because I do not give enough of a shit to go chase it down.

It makes me yawn.

Cooperative play: I adore it. Challenges I don’t mind, but only if they’re fair; bad game design, deliberately impossible quests, withheld information, and conscious obfuscation of game goals just piss me off. Numbers, PVP, perfection: meh.

More than anything I’m a social gamer. I love being able to hang out online with a bunch of friends, chat over headsets about trivialities, and only incidentally blow away a few bad guys.

14

It’s seriously not that bad. OK, a quest here and there is complex, but finding the quest giver NPC again should never be an issue. You have an in-game big map, a minimap, the name of the guy in the quest text, and a big yellow question mark will float over the person’s head if they have a quest reward for you.

Even WoW’s “complex” quests are no big deal compared to what games used to expect out of you. I don’t know what EQ2 does these days, but in EQ, they claimed to have the paladin’s Holy Avenger quest in-game for many months or longer, and last I recall, it was only discovered because some people just happened to be talking around the right NPCs and one of those NPCs somehow picked up on a keyword (you activated quests by saying key words back to them, which tended to sound a lot like “what door” “what chest” etc. if you were standing next to someone getting a quest) and started babbling about how you could start looking for the sword. They even made you learn a variety of obscure languages so you could figure out how to research your higher-level spells, if you were a caster class. Once the wonders of the Internet were realized, people went online to look up the recipes instead. Just like WoW.

Leveling in WoW is pretty fast anyway. It seems like each expansion or more frequently they make an announcement about how EXP requirements for lower levels have been reduced - at one point not long ago people were logging in their lower-level chars to see whether or not they’d level-up on log in - and monsters in the previous expansion’s zones had their hit points reduced by 30% or so.

15

But BGII is an almost entirely different kind of game than an MMORPG. Sure, they have the same genre trappings, but the game design philosophy behind them is entirely different. An MMO has to be designed with thousands of player in mind, each one at a different point in the story. You simply can’t get the kind of detailed, plot-and-character based gameplay that was the hallmark of the BlackIsle classic RPGs in that sort of milieu.

You do know that you have a quest log, right? With a few exceptions, all the quests will say something like, “Return to Thag in Orgrimmar for your reward.” And when you’re in Orgrimmar with the completed quest, Thag will show up on your minimap as a great big yellow question mark. I’ve very rarely had a problem finding the person to whom I’m supposed to turn in a reward, and then it was usually because I didn’t read the quest closely enough.

I’ll say with absolute confidence that none of those things exist in WoW to any significant degree. It’s one of the easiest, most user friendly MMOs on the market.

16

I’m not sure I agree with this. I took the 10-day trial in November and have been playing (too much, probably) since. I levelled 1-34 or so with no add-ons at all and never had any trouble understanding and completing quests (I’ve since started using a helper to level faster, but I’m not sure I consider it an improvement). Sure, sometimes you get stuck for a few minutes (or even an hour) but the thing with MMO is that you’re not playing the game alone. You can always ask another player (or a guild, but not in the trial) for help. Is there any example you have in mind of a deliberately obfuscated quest? Cause I sure don’t remember any… maybe Mankirk’s wife at the Crossroads…

Also, the map puts a big fricken question mark on the head of anyone that has a quest you completed, and they show up on the mini-map…

I guess the thing I like most about WoW is that it’s pretty solid in many aspects - group play, solo play, and PVP (battlegrounds, arena, or world). So depending on your mood there’s always a good gaming session to be had.

As far as the graphics go, de gustibus…

ON EDIT: What Miller said…

17

This isn’t quite how I meant it. That is, I’m not a person who is obsessed with gear by any means, but I like finding ways to both make my character better (through collecting new items), make myself a better player, and making my guild better. For me, this manifests itself by seeking out better gear, improving on boss strategies for bosses we’re working on, and finding ways to improve how I play. There’s still stuff I’m sure I’m not going to see, and I don’t expect to get every piece of gear to be the best one.

But this aspect takes on different aspects for other people. I happen to know someone who loves the profession grind and finding ways to play the WoW economy to make lots of money, the way I might work on rep to get a piece of gear, he spends time searching the auction house and finding ways to make money. Other people enjoy PVP a lot, which is something I take interest in, but to a much lesser degree than PVE.

Either way, one of the main draw of an MMO is the endless pursuit of improvement, and this is one place where WoW does a good job because there’s so many ways to improve yourself.

No surprise, I’m one of only a handful of people who really enjoys the numbers aspect.

This is another place where I think WoW really excels. You can group with just 1-2 other people for questing. You can put together a group of 5 and run a dungeon, or a group of 10 or 25 and run a raid. Even if no one you know is online, there’s people looking for groups for these sorts of things. If you like PVP, you can make a group of friends and do arena or BGs, or you can just go into BGs.

In fact, this is the main draw for me. If I could have all of my reputations maxed, never need to get gold for repairs or consumables, I would probably just log in for raids, and maybe spend some spare time on the weekend doing arena and BGs. Some of my fondest memories were learning complicated fights like Lady Vashj, Kael, Archimonde, Illidan, and everything in Sunwell. Sure, it was frustrating at times, and lots of endless wipes from silly mistakes, but when the guild finally clicked and we finally got to see a boss like that go down, it was impossible not to get excited. Sure, the raid content is a little lacking right now (being soon after the most recent expansion, so it’s back to a more introductory stage and, thus, easier), I expect it will be just as interesting again when the next raid instance comes out.

I spend a lot of time, even when I’m doing dailies, running BGs, logged into my guild’s vent server and chatting with real life friends and in game friends alike. Sometimes we’ll run a heroic and just chat away while we’re playing, only breaking the conversation occassionally for non-trivial boss encounters and loot. The WoW community is massive, and you can meet tons of like-minded people. Some are more social, some are more oriented toward in-game progression, and you can find a mix that works well for you.

18

No kidding. I love the game but a quest I just finished required me to get three parts to a uniform: robe, hat, and shoulders. By the time I had finally got the robe, I had eight hats and five shoulders, not to mention the 120 some odd pieces of cloth the enemies dropped in between. :dubious: Course it was totally worth it to get the whatever it was I got. I think I got a wand that I couldn’t use. It was a nice wand though.

19

Total meh. I kept playing until I hit 60 (years ago when that was the highest level) because people kept saying how great it was when you didn’t have to level grind anymore. Turned out it was just more of the same repetitive boring gameplay. I had to run the same dungeon dozens of times to get the “good” gear, then when it finally dropped I had to win a lottery just to get it. I like the concept of MMOs, but I have yet to play one that was actually FUN. The only thing that I missed out on that looked kinda fun was the arenas. 3v3 pvp sounds cool. Other than that, meh.

20

It isn’t an issue in City of Heroes. You click on the name of the quest-giver and it tells you which zone he’s in and it puts up a waypoint telling you exactly which way to travel. By comparison, WoW makes me go “okay… which city was that guy in again? What was the name of that tiny little village outside Ironforge? Maybe that was it. That’s halfway across the map. He sure isn’t around here. I think.”

I’m familiar with the concept of an MMO, thanks. I know the limitations. It doesn’t make sense to play a game because it’s designed to make thousands of other people happy if it doesn’t make me happy.

Yeah. I do know. I still think it’s a poor interface compared to COH.

I was not accusing WoW of such; I was responding to the overly broad point of “if you like cooperative play and PVP, you’ll like WoW.” I was stating my likes and dislikes in equally general terms; a better example of deliberate obfuscation would be the original Star Wars: Galaxies.

Like the guy who said “duel me pussy” as soon as I logged in? I’m not impressed by the behavior of people I’ve met so far.

I doubt it. Most people who are like-minded probably aren’t playing this game. I don’t enjoy the equipment grind, the graphics, the auction house, the looting, PVP in general, or the crafting. The combat seems slow compared to COH.